Tough week

Like most humans, I live through disappointment on occasion in my life.  When I was looking for a faculty job, every email or phone call rejecting me hurt me pretty bad.  In my personal life, an argument with a friend cuts into me pretty deep.  I can only put on the facade of a happy-go-lucky person so much.  Luckily, I have a pretty good support network to pull me through these kinds of things.  I highly recommend you have a good network for when life diverts one way or another.  It's better than any drug, vice, or otherwise.  But this week a few personal and professional things cut kind of deep.  This post doesn't have any insight, advice, or whatever, and I was thinking about not publishing it, but I hate letting words go to waste, sooooooo........

This part week I started a study overseas introducing a 'humanitarian-use' type of device.  This was for patients with no other option; so it gives us data on the device while giving people a chance.  I recognize that some patients will have complications with therapies I have developed, but I rationalize it with the fact that lots more will live and often have much better lives.  The good greatly outweighs the bad.  And when I heard about someone losing their life because of a complication I had a strong leadership team above me, and great friends around me, to help me stay strong.  

For the past week I've been coping with a 0% survival from this device.  A major unforeseen problem that even physicians had no idea was coming.  From past experience it takes time to dull things that happen like this.  The first thing I thought of after getting to the airport was that I really can't wait to get into academics so my work will not (directly) enter the clinic.  I won't have an impact on patients directly.  Sure, my research is very translational, but I can't help but think that I'll never have to experience something like this again.  My biggest beef with academics in the medical devices field is they claim to know devices, design, medical science, and engineering well, but most have never actually had a direct impact on patients or designed a devices used by a physician.  Nearly every engineering class I took has been useless in designing medical devices.  My background in physics, on the other hand, is something I use every day.  But I'm pretty okay with this trade-off.  My beef with academic research is warranted to disconnect myself.  I'm now a little more okay with being disconnected from clinical work.  The more disconnected I am from real medical device design, the less likely I'll be to deal with this kind of pain.

The CTO of my company was on the flight next to me and could tell that I was hit hard.  This is my first real failure here.  I've had failures, but with far less impactful ramifications.  He told me something like, "Suck it up.  These are the things that happen on the cutting edge. You will always be disappointed at some point.  The key is not to drown it, but reflect on it.  Remember the good, identify what needs to be changed, and be grateful for where you're at."  I responded with, "I'll try".  Then slept for 12 straight hours.

Funding academics

Normally, when there's a technology I discover through publications or a competing or start-up company, I have to make a critical decision for my company:

a) Make a better version of the technology,
b) License the technology, or
c) Collaborate.

There's a d): keep it to myself, but let's assume that doesn't exist.  Each of these has pros and cons (obviously), and a couple weeks ago I discovered a technology that will be very cool in one of my products.  And I know that with my involvement, it will be much better (one of the best things about the internet is that I can be cocky and not feel bad for it :) ).  Not just because of my knowledge, but because of my budget.  In this particular case, it's a lab at a major state university in a different state (not one of the schools I applied for...for those of you thinking about conflicts of interest).  So I'm weighing which of these options I should pursue, and since I have some experience in a), b), and c), of course I want to blog my thoughts.

a) I've done this before with a start-up that had a technology that they weren't willing to share at all.  I came up with a prototype alternative using a different physical principle, but giving similar, but better, data.  This method was cheaper and had other clinical advantages.  The company didn't get purchased for the hundreds of millions of dollars they wanted from us (don't cry for them, they got bought by one of our competitors).  My version is getting ready to save a ton of lives as we've gotten approval for sale in the good ol' USA.  This was relatively cheap, and turned around in less than half the time of the company acquisition and integrating their technology.

b) I didn't have time to create a specific product, so I knew of a company that had something close-to-done.  The product isn't really something complicated, just something that's necessary for the particular surgical procedure.  So I led the licensing effort, and ended up with a product that got recalled after 3 months.  Not a pleasant experience, and now I'm redesigning the product myself.

c) I collaborate with two university medical centers to perform animal and some human studies.  But they have relatively little engineering input, they just perform the procedures and process data for us. Nothing spectacular, although I've gotten these universities over a half million bucks each per year.  The one time I found a university to work with me on an actual product things never worked out because of legal.  They wanted a crazy amount of overhead (500%), and our people were not okay with that.  Then our legal department got mad, then my manager got mad. Not a great experience.

So, I talked to legal a few months ago, and got approval from the VP of my company.  I've been allotted $800,000 over two years to allocate to this.  The PI has a couple smaller grants, but nothing big.  He was very receptive, and he has gotten his legal department on board.  We have agreed to 400% and my company gets to keep the IP.  This significantly cuts into the budget.  We'll be able to fund maybe two students, but we will have enough left to do what we need.

I'm really looking forward to this because I'll be able to work with students again!  Being treated like a colleague from the PI is fun, too.  He doesn't really act like I'm his boss, which I appreciate.  I just want to do cool science.  My #2 working with me is pretty pumped about this too, because it's her alma mater for her MS and BS (she has a PhD).  I'm going to try and make sure she's very well trained.  If I get admission to the ivory tower, she'll need to take over.  And if the academic search doesn't end well, then at least I'll have this academic exposure!  Bright sides!